On April 10, the day World QS rankings declared Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) as India’s top-ranked university, JNU’s Narmada hostel lights up at 9 p.m. As students eat dinner in the mess and wrap up for the night, two young men use markers to write ‘Hastinapur University’ on chart paper stuck in front of the hostel. Three vans with film equipment are parked outside and dozens of actors are getting ready for the shooting of a web series by filmmaker Sudhir Mishra on students during India’s Emergency.
A group of five first-year students from the Centre of Russian Studies walks past the shoot location, but what piques their interest is the activity in the building opposite the hostel — the office of the university’s student union (JNUSU). Here, the All India Students Association (AISA) is holding a public hearing on what it believes is the commercialisation of the campus. The students sit on the steps of the building and listen in. Inside, about 30 people are in the audience as Sucheta De, CPI(ML) member and former JNUSU president, speaks about how JNU is a “blend of worlds and experiences” and that there are concerted attempts to change what it stands for.
As the five students, from different parts of the country, discuss the shooting of the web series, the conversation quickly segues into the new narrative being built around JNU. They talk about how this had almost prevented their families from letting them take admission here. One of them says, “JNU ke baahar jao, toh log antankwadi bulana shuru kar lete hai (When we step out of campus, people start calling us terrorists).”
